Some days ago, I commented on an arxiv paper that had been promoted by the arxiv blog (which, for all I know, has no official connection with the arxiv). This blogpost had an aftermath that gave me something to think. Most of...

Introduction Today, Microsoft released their latest Patch Tuesday. This Patch includes a fix for vulnerability CVE-2015-0057, an IMPORTANT-rated exploitable vulnerability which we responsibly disclosed to Microsoft a few months ago. As part of our research, we revealed this... Read More

"... Smith agreed and got his memoir in before the deadline, but unfortunately passed away before he was announced as a joint winner. Judging from Wikipedia’s telling of the story, it appears Smith played along so graciously that his reply did not mention or otherwise cause the committee to recall his published papers. When the situation was finally realized and Hermite let on about Smith’s communication to him, Hermite was asked why he had not brought it to the committee’s notice. His reply boiled down to: I forgot."﻿

"Just to make this clear. The article uses the word particle (which isn't completely incorrect), but no new fundamental particles have been found. The objects in question are Baryons which are combinations of specifically three quarks. The Standard Model predicts the mass (and therefore likelihood at a set energy scale) of the different possible baryons that you'd get if you exhaustively combined the known quarks presented in the Standard Model and these, being fairly heavy, are very rare; so while predicted, have not been seen before. The article is well written, but isn't actually an incredibly exciting development in particle physics. The process of finding most of these predicted baryons is fairly tedious, so unless one of these resonances produces an exciting deviation from the standard model, these papers will just roll in eventually." - a redditor @ /r/physics

Here is a nice puzzlevia reddit"You are condemned to die unless you can prove your intelligence to a devious jailer. You, and your friend, are incarcerated. Your jailer offers a challenge. If you complete the challenge you are both free to go. Here are the rules:

● The jailer will take you into a private cell. In the cell will be a chessboard and a jar containing 64 coins.

● The jailer will take the coins, one-by-one, and place a coin on each square on the board. He will place the coins randomly on the board. Some coins will be heads, and some tails (or maybe they will be all heads, or all tails; you have no idea. It's all at the jailers whim. He may elect to look and choose to make a pattern himself, he may toss them placing them the way they land, he might look at them as he places them, he might not …). If you attempt to interfere with the placing of the coins, it is instant death for you. If you attempt to coerce, suggest, or persuade the jailer in any way, instant death. All you can do it watch.

● Once all the coins have been laid out, the jailer will point to one of the squares on the board and say: “This one!” He is indicating the magic square. This square is the key to your freedom.

● The jailer will then allow you to turn over one coin on the board. Just one. A single coin, but it can be any coin, you have full choice. If the coin you select is a head, it will flip to a tail. If it is a tail it will flip to a head. This is the only change you are allowed to make to the jailers initial layout.

● You will then be lead out of the room. If you attempt to leave other messages behind, or clues for your friend … yes, you guessed it, instant death!

● The jailer will then bring your friend into the room.

● Your friend will look at the board (no touching allowed), then examine the board of coins and decide which location he thinks is the magic square.

● He gets one chance only (no feedback). Based on the configuration of the coins he will point to one square and say: “This one!”

● If he guesses correctly, you are both pardoned, and instantly set free. If he guesses incorrectly, you are both executed.